


Who You Are Inside

by Asphodelia



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Daemon Touching, Daemons, I wanted to write something with a cute bird, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sort Of, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29850408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphodelia/pseuds/Asphodelia
Summary: Your daemon is an expression of your soul in the form of an animal companion. Children's daemons shift between different animals, but at some point they settle into permanent shapes.The night of Moon's party, Hawk's daemon settles into a form that... isn't exactly 'badass'.
Relationships: Demetri & Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz, Demetri/Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	Who You Are Inside

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with 'His Dark Materials', the books (and currently a tv series) where daemons originate, you really don't have to be to read this. It's basically what it says in the summary; animal companion that is really your soul, doesn't have the same gender as you, kids' daemons shapeshift and adult's don't. If you are familiar - I've changed some stuff and merged it with some soul bond/soulmates stuff. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy =)

Agnes was a chameleon. She’d been a chameleon for years now, having settled into that form when Demetri was 12. He’d always been happy with her form – she was small enough to ride around on his shoulder, and a chameleon’s camouflage was about as close as nature could get to invisibility. The best super power. 

Chameleons weren’t the type of daemon you saw a lot of, and they weren’t an animal people looked at and could immediately use to judge your personality. Demetri was aware that lots of kids hoped their daemons would settle into forms like dogs to show everyone they were loyal, cats to show they were independent, or even something like a snake so they could spend the rest of their lives keeping everyone on their toes thinking they were clever and sneaky. Demetri was happy with his slightly off-beat daemon, though. Chameleons were resourceful and cautious, and Demetri didn’t care if most people didn’t know that and couldn’t read his personality based on the little lizard that was his constant companion. 

Agnes was his only constant companion these days, and he did enjoy her company – she was snarky and pragmatic and they had a lot of fun trading barbs – but he was still getting pretty frustrated that it was just the two of them. Well, that wasn’t quite right. He had Sam and Robby and the other Miyagi-Dos now. But even having a friend group now, he still missed the closeness that he’d had before all this. It used to be the four of them: him and Agnes, and Eli and LeLe. 

Eli’s daemon hadn’t settled yet, which was statistically rare. 

A child’s daemon could shapeshift into any animal, but as you got older – usually when you’d be considered a ‘tween’ – and your personality started to settle, so did your daemon. Your daemon was an expression of your soul, so the form it took was generally taken to mean a lot about you. For a daemon to not have settled by the time a person was 16 was an oddity. People sometimes interpreted late settlers as being overly childish. Demetri had always just thought it meant his best friend was more open to change than most people. 

He wished he’d been wrong when that openness to change resulted in Eli changing literally everything about himself, everything Demetri had loved about him. 

It had taken him until ‘Hawk’ was dating Moon to figure out that love wasn’t purely platonic. Agnes had laughed at him.

When Eli had first started spiking up his hair and calling himself Hawk, Demetri hadn’t understood it. It had bothered him that his best friend, pretty much his favorite person, had thought there was so much about himself that needed changing. He’d tried to tell him he didn’t need to change, in his own ways, but had probably come off judgmental and unsupportive. Which he regretted (although he had actually been, and still was, pretty judgmental about the whole thing). But he barely had time to realize why he didn’t like seeing Hawk with Moon before he’d gone too far. Hawk had gone past flipping the script and had started beating innocent bystanders with it. 

They’d faced each other in the comic store – LeLe coiled around Hawk’s shoulders in the form of a black cobra, as she often was lately – and Demetri had asked indignantly if Hawk would really hurt him. It was honestly unthinkable. They’d been in each other’s corners forever. He’d even believed he had proof Hawk wouldn’t hurt him because he’d touched his daemon, which was… not something you were supposed to do, unless you were married or basically married. Kids did sometimes accidentally, but quickly stopped and ran off giggling. Or crying. Touching another person’s soul was a pretty big deal.

Some people believed in soulmates in the sense of ‘everyone has one out there somewhere’ and that you knew you’d found yours based on the feeling you got when you touched each others daemons (Demetri was not one of these people – it just wasn’t statistically practical). Others believed you chose your soulmate by forming a soul bond this way (this made more sense to Demetri but he was still a skeptic about the whole thing). Both philosophies – and all academic research on the subject – agreed that going around touching random people’s daemons was a bad idea. Opening up that kind of link with someone, even if only temporarily, could be dangerous and shouldn’t be done if you didn’t trust a person completely.

About a year ago, though, LeLe (shaped like a hamster at the time) had just sort of climbed onto Demetri’s lap while he and Eli were playing video games. 

Daemons generally didn’t do that. When you were a little kid it happened sometimes because your daemon was also a little kid, but they were too old now for it to be an accident. A popular theory among people who believed in soulmates was that if your daemon was drawn to someone like that it could be your soul pointing you towards the person you were supposed to be with. 

Again, Demetri didn’t subscribe to ‘soulmate theory’. Although he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t smiled at the thought of it in the days after the incident. Agnes had told him to ‘just ask the boy out already’ when this happened and he’d thought she was joking... 

Anyways, when it had happened Eli had been horrified. He’d alternated between apologizing profusely and whisper-yelling at LeLe to knock it off and come back to him, but she’d stayed put. Technically she was sitting on his clothed leg so he wasn’t quite touching her, but then Eli had tried to grab her and she’d climbed up his chest to avoid her human’s hands. She settled on his shoulder, opposite where Agnes was perched. Demetri didn’t know what she was chattering back at Eli because you could only understand your own daemon, but she seemed annoyed with him. Then, suddenly, the little daemon snuggled against the base of his neck.

Touching someone’s daemon hadn’t been something Demetri had previously been that curious about. It had actually sounded sort of awkward to him. But when LeLe’s fur touched his skin it was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. It was both intoxicating and clarifying, overwhelming and deeply comfortable. He could see Eli in a way that was both different and exactly like he’d already seen him. It was hard to actually comprehend the fullness of another person’s soul, especially at a first glance, but he didn’t have to understand everything to know that his best friend was beautiful. 

“Maybe I should try to get her?” Demetri liked the new feeling of connection with his friend, but it was also clear that he was experiencing things Eli didn’t want him to. LeLe had always had a bit of a surprising spunky streak considering how quiet Eli was, but for a daemon to outright go against their human’s wishes was rare. Your daemon was part of you, however much it appeared to be a separate being. But that was what had happened. In that moment he could feel Eli’s panic. He knew he could find the exact source of his fear if he probed the dark, invasive, mess of…something… that was starting to dig into all the wonderful light and sweetness of his friend’s soul. But that wasn’t his business if Eli didn’t want it to be. 

“I guess the damage is already done.” Eli muttered with a nod, and Demetri reached up to his shoulder. LeLe’s soft little hamster body scurried onto his hand without any prompting – she’d already done what she came to do – and he indulged in holding his friend’s soul for just a moment longer. 

“You can hold Agnes, if you like.” Demetri found himself offering, not so they’d be ‘even’ but because he wanted Eli to get to feel what he was feeling. It wouldn’t be exactly the same, he knew, his soul would be different. Probably more bitter. But one of the things he’d realized he could feel was how important he was to Eli. He felt absolutely _adored_ by Eli and Eli deserved to feel that returned. 

Eli shook his head, though, and held out his hands to take LeLe back. After that his friend’s daemon developed a habit for a while where she would come and sit by him and look at him like she wanted him to pick her up. He wouldn’t, since he knew Eli didn’t want that. Even if his soul apparently did. They’d never talked about how it had felt for either of them; Eli had been eager to get back to their video game and just ignore it. 

LeLe had stopped trying to interact with him about a month before Eli had become Hawk. These days the daemon had changed as much as her human. While she’d mostly gone with small, soft, forms – small birds, hamsters, rabbits – before, now she was often shaped like a vicious-looking snake or a bird of prey. Hawk also called her ‘Leah’ now, which was technically her name on his birth certificate but not something he’d called her much before. Besides Miguel, his ‘badass’ new friends would probably think ‘LeLe’ was a stupid nickname for a daemon. 

In the comic store on the day he realized Hawk was actually capable of hurting him – that the pure soul he’d once gotten a glimpse of must have changed completely, that the warm feelings he’d felt directed at him were gone – LeLe’s black cobra head had raised to hiss something in her human’s ear and he’d thought for a moment she might be reminding him they didn’t want this. But Hawk had laughed and smiled like a predator, so it had probably been a joke at his expense. 

That had been about two weeks ago, and tonight Moon was having a party to try to show everyone it was more fun just being friends, or to heal the wound violence had inflicted on their community, or however she’d said it. Not that Demetri hadn’t been listening – he’d begrudgingly liked Moon since she’d first started dating Hawk and hanging around with them, and he liked her more now that she’d dumped the spikey cretin – but he just didn’t put much stock in the idea that everyone hanging out and consuming alcohol would make anything better. Still she’d been so excited when she told him her secret plan to invite everyone – eyes shining as her butterfly daemon Stardance fluttered happily around her head – that he hadn’t had it in him to burst her bubble. He was going to go to the party, and maybe… he’d try.

He wasn’t optimistic that if he just walked up and tried to be friends with Eli again that things would all work out, and honestly it irked him that it was on him to try at all. If they were going to fix things Hawk should be the one making the first move. But he wouldn’t, so if Demetri wanted a chance at restoring their friendship the ball would always be in his own court. Part of him wished he didn’t want that second chance. Every time he looked at Hawk it was like looking at a crime scene outline of where Eli used to be. That day at the comic store he’d thought he’d given up hoping there was any trace of him left. But then thoughts of how he used to be, how they used to be, would come back and hope would rear its ugly head again. 

He’d give it one more shot. He’d go to the party and just try to talk to him. Casually. It didn’t have to be some kind of tearful confession about how he wanted to be friends again, and it would certainly not be an admittance to wanting anything beyond that (he was fairly sure that was off the table even if they did patch things up). It just had to be a conversation that didn’t end in insults or violence. Hawk said he wasn’t into ‘nerd shit’ anymore, but there was no way he wouldn’t be interested in some Doctor Who news. Right?

Sam and Robby were picking him up at 6 for the party and as the time drew closer, Demetri became more nervous and more focused on psyching himself up. For her part, Agnes tried to calm him down with her Hawk impression. She basically just used her camouflage to turn her dorsal crest red and stalked around on the branches set up for her above his desk declaring random school supplies ‘nerd shit’ (“What kind of loser uses a pencil sharpener? Real men sharpen pencils with their fists!”). When she locked eyes with his old Tigger plush and growled out ‘what are you looking at, pussy?’, Demetri found himself laughing and felt a bit of the stress leave him.

Then his phone rang.

He assumed it was Sam calling to say they were running late or something, but when he looked it was Eli calling (he’d never changed his name in his contacts list). 

Demetri didn’t answer, he just stared at the phone. He hadn’t talked to Eli on the phone since the first time he’d threatened him to keep his mouth shut about Cobra Kai, back before Demetri learned to take his threats seriously. What could he be calling him for? A small part of him hoped that maybe Hawk was going to be the one to reach out and fix things, but most of him knew it was more likely to be another threat. He wasn’t aware of anything he could have done recently that would have set him off again, though, unless just existing was enough now… He spent too long thinking about it and the screen went dark.

“It stopped ringing.”

“Phones do that when you don’t answer them. Go figure.” 

Rolling his eyes at Agnes, Demetri opened his device and debated internally as to whether he should call back. He hadn’t reached a decision when the phone started ringing again. This time he answered it.

“Eli?”

There was no response for a moment. Not even an angry correction about his name. 

“D-demetri?”

The fear in his friend’s voice momentarily banished any anger he’d been holding onto from the comic store/food court incident. 

“Hey buddy, what’s wrong?”

“LeLe, she…” This was probably the first time Hawk had called his daemon by her old nickname in months. For a moment Demetri was terrified she’d been injured, or worse. Generally, a daemon lived for however long the person did. If a person died their daemon vanished, but if a daemon somehow died (they couldn’t catch diseases and didn’t need to eat so most daemon deaths were caused by accidents or attacks) the person would go on living. They’d just lose the ability to care about or enjoy anything. Science couldn’t really explain it because the brain chemistry of people whose daemons had died wasn’t changed at all. You could scan their brains and present them with stimuli that would have made them laugh or cry or get angry before the death of their daemon and the scans would still light up in all the right ways. When asked if they really didn’t feel the things science was saying they must daemonless people would often describe it like the feelings were there and they were aware of them, but they couldn’t touch them. 

Demetri panicked for the few moments it took Eli to find his voice again, but when he did he didn’t report anything awful happening to his daemon. 

“She settled.” 

Demetri let out a sigh of relief, although now he was confused as to what the panic was about. Unless settling had put her in peril – like if she’d settled as an aquatic creature? Or maybe she’d settled in a form like an elephant that would affect where Hawk could live? You couldn’t get too far from your daemon, so if it was too big to fit in an apartment you couldn’t live in an apartment. 

“Okay, that’s okay,” Demetri tried to keep his voice calm and even. “What did she settle as?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Well, that wasn’t a good sign. 

“Are you at home?”

“No. I was on my way to a party when she… I can’t go now.”

“Where are you?”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? I’m coming to help.” 

“I don’t need help.” Hawk snapped, fear replaced by anger in his voice.

“Then why did you call?”

Demetri waited for a moment. There was no answer. 

“Listen, just tell me where you are and I’ll come, okay?” Demetri couldn’t help the pleading tone of his voice. 

“…The park across from Moon’s house. In the ravine.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

Demetri hung up and texted Sam that he was going to skip the party. He borrowed his mom’s car to go find Eli.

“You’re still the person he calls when he’s scared.” Agnes pointed out as they drove, voicing the thought that had been bouncing around his head. He was trying not to let it settle in and feed his stubborn hopes. Hawk could just be calling him out of habit or something. 

When he got to the park and began walking to the wooded area where he assumed the ravine was – he wasn’t super familiar with the park – Demetri couldn’t help imagining what he would find when he found the red-haired boy. He’d been shaken, so it still felt like his daemon could be in some kind of trouble. It took Demetri a while to find Hawk even once he was inside the wooded area and walking down the slope of the ravine, and as he searched he imagined more and more dangerous scenarios. 

When he found Hawk sitting alone on a rock – no shark struggling to keep its gills in the shallow stream of water at the bottom of the ravine – he wasn’t sure what to think. 

“Where is she?” 

Eli looked up, noticing him only when he spoke. He pointed up into the trees. 

“Oh. Is she a bird?” Demetri was getting even more confused now. 

Hawk nodded.

Okay. So Hawk’s daemon hadn’t taken on a form that would complicate his life at all. Considering his alias he should even be happy. Unless he was worried the name ‘Hawk’ sounded stupid if his daemon was a literal hawk?

“I’m sorry, I’m having a bit of trouble here. What’s wrong?” 

No answer. This was the most reluctant to speak he’d been since he still went by Eli. Luckily, Demetri had a decade of experience drawing Eli out of his shell. He went over and sat on a rock next to his rock. “Is it that you’re definitely not a timelord now?”

A staple of Doctor Who lore was that The Doctor’s daemon never settled. 

Hawk sent him a slightly dirty look for bringing ‘nerd shit’ into the conversation, but at least he was looking at him now. “Did you hear Moffat’s out as showrunner?”

“Since when?” Eli was interested and distracted from whatever was troubling him. Good. It couldn’t really be as life shattering as it had sounded on the phone, then. “Is there a new Doctor? What’s he like?”

“She is badass.”

“She? No way.” A small, familiar, smile bloomed across Eli’s face as he became more drawn into the conversation. Demetri had worried he’d never see that smile again. His plan if this line of conversation had worked at the party was to show Eli clips on his phone and draw him into plans to get caught up. He hadn’t had much hope of it working, but it seemed like Eli was still excited enough about one of his favourite shows to forget for a while that he was too ‘cool’ for it now. The boy Demetri cared for was still in there. 

Unfortunately, Demetri couldn’t just ignore the reason they were sitting at the bottom of this ravine and proceed with that plan. He’d gotten Eli to open up, now he needed to figure out what was going on.

“Yep. The new companions are cool too. One of them has a raven daemon – clever, investigative.”

Eli still seemed to be with him.

“Lots of the smartest people have different kinds of bird daemons.”

And now Eli was looking away and frowning again, but he still didn’t seem as distant as before.

“And then most of the more predatory birds are associated with strength and leadership. Your Sensei Lawrence has an eagle, right?”

Demetri remembered the large bird – ‘Renegade’, although he was pretty sure he’d heard her called ‘Betty’ once in an annoyed whisper – eyeing Agnes like she’d forgotten daemons didn’t need to eat.

“LeLe’s not an eagle.” Eli muttered towards the ground.

“Can you call her down so I can see her? Remember when Agnes settled I ran all the way to your house to show you.” 

“She won’t come. She’s mad at me.” Your daemon being mad at you wasn’t exactly normal for most people. You might squabble with your daemon from time to time, sure, but to be seriously angry with each other was rare. It was basically arguing with yourself. 

“Is that why you can’t go to the party?”

“I can’t go to the party because no one can see her like this!” Well, that solved the mystery of why Hawk’s daemon was mad at him. Not everyone was thrilled with their daemon’s final form, but generally the daemon and human were on the same page about what they wanted. 

Judging by the attack Hawk’s outburst triggered, he and LeLe were not on the same page right now. 

A small brown bird dive bombed the mohawked boy from the branches above them. Demetri had thought he didn’t see her earlier because she was really high up, but actually she was just very small. A tiny, fluffy, sparrow with her feathers puffed out in anger (which just made her rounder and more adorable) was trying to peck at Hawk’s face while he flailed his arms out to try keeping her at bay. Demetri just stared until he actually fell backward onto the dirt of the slope behind them. Then he laughed, hard. 

LeLe stopped her assault and came to flutter around Demetri’s head. She was so cute. And so …spunky. Just like she always had been. That made more sense in hindsight, having seen the ‘Hawk’ side of Eli. 

Eli, for his part, was apparently taking Demetri’s laughter as confirmation of all the fears he’d been harbouring and looked absolutely wretched where he was still half-sitting, half-laying, in the dirt. 

“No no, I’m laughing at you because of the whole… scene,” Demetri tried to stop the chuckle that came out on that last word and failed. He really did hate seeing Eli so worried. “Not because LeLe settled as an adorable little sparrow. I think she’s great.” 

“She’s small and weak.” Hawk glared, standing up like he meant to be intimidating. The effect was ruined when LeLe flew at his face again and made him duck. She was chirping at him and Demetri wished he knew what she was saying. 

“It’s not like _she’s_ going to be fighting in any tournaments.”

“Nobody will ever take me seriously again.” 

“Lots of people have small, fuzzy, daemons and are taken seriously.” Demetri tried not to roll his eyes. Eli was genuinely upset. Demetri didn’t think he should be, but he had to respect that he was. He knew what he was comparing himself to. His ‘sensei’ had an eagle he called Renegade. Miguel’s daemon, Marta, was a jaguar (she had actually also settled pretty late, right after Miguel’s cafeteria fight with Kyler). Not all the cobras had ‘badass’ daemons (although Bert’s being a badger had always thrown Demetri for a bit of a loop), but Hawk would still think it was a requirement for him to. “Sam and Mr. LaRusso both have miniature goats. Aside from LeLe they might be the cutest things in the world. People take them seriously.”

Okay, bad example. He was getting visibly angrier. LeLe was still on Demetri’s side, though, as evidenced by the way she had returned to sit on a nearby branch. He wondered if she’d ever really changed at all or if Hawk had just been telling her to take all those ‘badass’ forms to better match his new persona. 

Demetri stood and raised his hands in a ‘I mean no harm’ kind of way. “My point is that some people might make quick superficial judgements based on a daemon, but ultimately it’s how you behave that matters to most people.”

It was generally understood that even though daemons could have meanings most people agreed on, what animals ‘meant’ varied from person to person. You could never really know someone just by looking at their daemon. 

“That’s not...” The bite was leaving Hawk’s voice – he probably recognized that Demetri had a point – but there was still a bitterness there. “I just thought I’d be better by now. Different.”

“I thought you were different now too. If this means you haven’t changed as much as I thought, I’m glad for it.” Demetri figured he might as well be honest. “Like I said, lots of smart people have bird daemons.” Obviously, there were exceptions, like with Renegade’s human. That was probably a case where some kind of glory or confidence symbolism was taking precedence. “They represent intelligence and freedom. And to me a little bird like LeLe also seems gentle. Is that really so terrible?”

“It’s never gotten me anywhere before.” Overall it seemed like Eli wasn’t feeling any better about his daemon’s form than he had when Demetri had arrived. 

“Eli… do you remember when LeLe crawled up onto my shoulder?” Of course he did, you didn’t forget something like that, but Demetri supposed he was more testing the waters to see if this was something his friend (he hoped this all meant they could be friends again) was okay with talking about.

“I didn’t like that.” Eli answered suspiciously, like he was worried Demetri would ask to touch his daemon again. “It felt like being under some kind of microscope.” 

“Sorry, I –“

“You didn’t choose to look, I know.” 

“Your soul was beautiful, Eli.” Demetri meant what he was saying, but being so sappy still felt awkward to him. The fear that Hawk would suddenly call him a pussy and stalk off, forcing LeLe to either follow him or put them both through a lot of pain, was still there even if this conversation hadn’t been a complete disaster so far. He shuffled awkwardly on his feet and forced himself to keep going. “You never wanted to talk about it so I never told you. But I just want you to know, if LeLe’s form now is an expression of what I saw then she’s… perfect. You should be proud of her.” 

Eli’s face had turned red at the word beautiful, and since he hadn’t stalked off or yelled at him yet that was probably from bashfulness and not anger. Cute. 

“I offered to let you hold Agnes before. You still can, if you want to see what I saw.”

“You’d let me touch your literal soul just to make me feel better about some dumb insecurity?”

“It’s not dumb. I mean, it’s completely dumb, but you’re not dumb for having it.” 

Eli seemed to actually think about it for a moment before shaking his head. “No. It sounds like a lot, and you already touched LeLe so we shouldn’t risk a Bond forming.”

That generally took more than touching each other’s daemon’s once, but Demetri supposed it wasn’t impossible. 

“…You’re a really good friend, Demetri.” Eli was speaking more to the ground again, not meeting his eyes. “And I know I’ve been pretty shitty to you lately. Cobra Kai’s just really important to me.”

Because it was a cult. Demetri knew saying that right now would only push him away again, though, and mostly he was just really happy to hear Eli call him his friend and admit he’d been in the wrong. 

“You could make it up to me by coming back to my place to watch Doctor Who.” Demetri suggested with a wide smile, feeling a lot more hopeful now that he would say yes. “Oh, unless you want to go to the party?”

“No, I… I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed of LeLe, but I still feel like we need some time to get used to it. So, um, Doctor Who sounds good.” Eli was fidgeting with his sleeves in an embarrassed way that was so completely Eli Demetri felt his smile widen at the sight. LeLe finally fluttered off of her perch and over to sit on her human’s shoulder. 

“It’s not ‘nerd shit’?” Demetri couldn’t resist the cheeky remark. It earned him a glare, but there wasn’t any malice there. 

“Know what, yeah. It’s nerd shit when you watch it.” Hawk smirked, an expression Demetri had never enjoyed on him before now. “When I watch it it’s awesome, though.” 

“Okay tough guy, let’s go.” 

It was two hours later when they were on Demetri’s sofa - a pizza in front of them and an episode and a half of Doctor Who behind them – that Eli scooted closer and spoke up in a nervous tone. 

“Holding Agnes would be too much right now, I think, but maybe… maybe someday, it could be cool.” 

“Even if it means a Bond might form?” He felt Eli’s shoulders shrug and when he looked his friend’s face was again as red as his hair. 

Demetri smiled and wound an arm behind his back to pull him a bit closer again.

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes, I did make Johnny's an eagle to make the name 'Eagle Fang' even dumber! But also I think it fits him. 
> 
> Earlier this week I made this thing for tumblr that's just pictures of Hawk next to birds with the same energy and the Eli bird was really cute so I wanted to write about it XD
> 
> My headcanons for daemons not mentioned: 
> 
> Robby - coyote (so he kind of has a 'dog' where his rival has a 'cat'), and also because coyotes can be seen as adaptable and protective.  
> Tory - scrappy cat  
> Mitch - french bulldog  
> Chris - cocker spaniel  
> Nate - monitor lizard  
> Amanda - fox  
> Anthony - won't have settled yet, but it's gonna be a tarantula  
> Aisha - I'm imagining a bear but I'm not really sure  
> Kreese - a cobra (duh)  
> Kyler - some kind of irritating monkey  
> Yasmin - some kind of prettily colored frog (wealth/growth, I read somewhere)  
> Carmen - dove


End file.
